Cruel World
by Bellicose Blue
Summary: (an empty street littered with trash and Clove's pale skin paler beneath the flickering light of the streetlamp, her shattered glass a few steps away, starlight dancing over the crushed crystals, illuminating the murky liquid spreading across the street until it's so unearthly beautiful Clove misses it, and there's veins of red in the glass and her dress and her skin)


**[[Shamelessly out-of-sequence lyrics from Lana del Rey's Cruel World. Beautiful song, occasional cursing, so there will be some in this as well. Also, holy depressing. This thing barely can keep its rating, if only because I don't want an M-rated story. Substance abuse and violence ahead.]]**

 _Shared my body and my mind with you, that's all over now_

Clove stumbles against a streetlight, leaning heavily against it as she stares out at the stars in the night sky. The street is oddly, strangely empty except for herself and some crumpled pieces of paper. She can hear the people, voices muted murmurs beneath pounding music, in the building she's just escaped. "I hate this," she whispers, a dangerous confession to the lonely road, but right now she doesn't care if anyone overhears her.

She's too occupied with a pungent drink gripped like it's precious in her right hand while her left wraps around the pole to keep her upright. She takes a deep sip, and the world becomes a little more clear and a little more hazy at the same time. The taste is made familiar through multiple repetitions, until her arm is no longer enough to support her and she slumps down onto the concrete, her little red party dress with its details of golden flame patterns riding up past indecent. (your outfits should remind the people that you are the inferno, the one that absorbed and quenched the spark that was Katniss Everdeen, Enobaria had told her before they went to the party and Clove swiped some booze and escaped.)

 _You like your women and you like fun_

Clove takes another swig of whatever sickly-sweet concoction she's stolen. She can barely taste the alcohol anymore. "Goddamned bastard, where are you?" she asks aloud. "Off screwing your whore again? I thought you had better taste than that." She's bitter, bitter enough to waste a precious sip of her drink by spitting in contempt.

"Cato, Cato, Cato," she sings a few minutes later. "You're missing the party, Cato. Don't you see? It's my party. A celebration of me. You should be here to watch me win." But Cato doesn't respond, so she fills the silence with another sip. Her mind is getting a little more cloudy, but the numbness feels pleasant. It's so long since she's felt pleasant, so she keeps drinking until she's a blurred mockery of the girl who throws knives. Now she isn't even sure if she could find a knife to throw, let alone hit a target.

 _Because you're young, you're wild, you're free, you're dancing circles around me, you're fucking crazy_

"I miss you, Cato," she admits later. "I never get to see you anymore. You're always off with Glimmer. Why can't you be here for me for once?" She leans her head against the pole, hearing her hairspray-stiffened curls crunching against the pressure, and she keeps doing it until the artful updo that took her stylist so much time is hanging in waves past her shoulders.

Clove's suddenly, unfathomably angry, and she takes her glass (a clear crystal with veins of red that flicker under the light of the streetlamp to look like smoldering embers) and sends it smashing into the street. "Fuck you, Cato! I don't need you anyway!" She likes the way she spat the last sentence and repeats it quietly to herself. (I don't need you anyway, I never needed you anyway, I didn't need you before and I certainly don't now)

 _Finally happy now that you're gone_

The door to the building she'd left opens quietly, and Enobaria slips out. She's still that gaunt kind of skinny beneath her tight, shimmering dress, collarbones highlighted with gold in the same patterns that twist and writhe across Clove's dress. Brutus is nowhere to be found, likely wasted out of his mind with his buddies and leering over the scantily-clad Capitolite women. Annoyance makes the corner of her mouth snarl up, revealing her filed teeth, but it all vanishes as soon as she spots Clove's slumped figure.

"Oh, Clove," she sighs, barely a breath, as she breezes over in her ridiculous heels. "What did you do to yourself?"

"Nothing," Clove insists, her voice slurring despite her best efforts to hide it. "I'm fine, swear." She raises one hand as if to haul herself up, then thinks better of it and lets it fall back into her lap.

"Oh, Clove," Enobaria murmurs again. "You're a mess." She glances around at the scene to affirm her statement. (an empty street littered with trash and Clove's pale skin paler beneath the flickering light of the streetlamp, her shattered glass a few steps away, starlight dancing over the crushed crystals, illuminating the murky liquid spreading across the street until it's so unearthly beautiful Clove misses it, and there's veins of red in the glass and her dress and her skin after she'd slipped off to the bathroom with a morphling from Six and put sweetness in her blood)

 _Everybody knows that I'm a mess, I'm crazy_

Enobaria kneels beside her and tugs the skirt of her dress down to a decent level. Clove tries to keep from looking her in the eye. There's pity and warning there. Right now, Clove doesn't want either. Finally Enobaria sighs and sits next to Clove, tucking her legs up underneath her with all the manners and grace Clove had never bothered to possess. "People are starting to miss you. I told them you were getting overwhelmed by the generous affections of the Capitol, and that I'd have to take you back." When Clove doesn't respond, she pushes. "Can you stand? We need to keep this as under-wraps as possible. Your image doesn't need to be hurt more."

Clove stares at the stars again, wishes she were as cold and distant as they. "Can you find Cato for me?" she asks, so quietly the words hang in the air. "I miss him."

 _And I'm so happy, so happy now you're gone_

Enobaria is quiet for so long that Clove has to turn her head to the side to look at her. There's tears in the older woman's eyes, cruel diamonds beneath the starlight. "Oh, Clove," she whispers, and she's a hundred years old when her face crumbles. "I miss him, too."

 _I did what I had to do, I can see you leaving now_

And Clove remembers the way they'd killed the Girl on Fire so slowly and beautifully people watching in the Capitol had cried, Cato pinning her down so she could only thrash as Clove made the tiniest of incisions in her skin. She'd made a thousand of those, pausing after each one to look her in the eye and smile as sweetly as she could. Oh, the pain hadn't been great, she was sure, as each individual was only a hair-thin line across her skin that barely leaked blood. But the girl's wild, desperate fear made each slow cut so delicious Clove could almost taste it.

After they'd spent hours playing with her, alternating between Clove's invisible lines and Cato's rather larger ones with the point of his sword, they'd killed her as one. (oh, beautiful torture and such a satisfying ending.) And they'd looked up at the sky so excitedly, so happily that their final opponent was gone. But then Claudius had revoked the earlier clause that would have allowed the two of them to win jointly.

She'd kissed Cato then, a promise and an apology. Then she sank her knife into his back.

(my life or yours, it's no contest, she'd told him once as she laid on his bed in the apartment. I want to win. I _need_ to win. heaven is closed to me and I'm too much a monster for hell. life is all I have left.)

(and he'd smiled over at her, a feral grin that made her shudder. oh, Clove, he replied, I'd do anything to save you.)

 _You're crazy for me._


End file.
